Oh those dusty country roads

A new study by University of Colorado geologists that carbon-dated the dust layers of rural soil in the West, claims that most of it has piled up since man started populating the regions in the 1800s. It restates the usual environmentalist bromides about grazing, plowing up grass to plant crops and driving rubber-tired vehicles on unpaved roads--all the stuff we do to live on a daily basis in the Western U.S.

If only man had left the Western land alone, the way God intended it--untouched, undisturbed and undespoiled. As if that nirvana ever existed or worked.

Grazing, rather than destroying the land, protects and nourishes the land. That's why God populated it with wild horses, buffalo, deer, elk and antelope. They eat the grass, and cause it to reseed and be fertilized, as their hooves break the surface of the soil to allow water and other nutrients access to the grassroots. Just like the cityslicker's lawn dies if he doesn't harvest (mow) it and water it, the western range has always been the same way.

Substituting the more economically-useful and productive beef cow and sheep for the wildlife has not appreciably changed the ecology of the land. The same process of nature for nourishing the native grasses and soil is carried out by these animals.

There was a reason for the dust bowl of the 1930s--large expanses of grass was plowed up for farming, and the livestock removed. Grass is what holds the soil in the arid West, and grazing animals are what nourishes the grass. There'd be a similar dustbowl today if all the livestock were removed and the ground were left to lie there "undisturbed."

Just as forerst and range fires are caused by outlawing logging, letting the dead trees and brush (tinder) build up on the forest floor (what the enviros call leaving the forest alone in its natural state), the western range only flourishes when it is managed by animals.

Tragically, the Colorado geologists are only yet another in a long line of intellectuals who failed to comprehend the basic processes of nature. When will they ever learn, as ranchers have, out of basic economic necessity?